I already knew Alice Sebold from The Lovely Bones, but I had not heard of Lucky (1999) by the same author until I saw it on my 50 Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40 List. Written just before The Lovely Bones, it is the true story of Sebold’s violent rape, on the last day of her first year of college. This book was good. It was well written, tense, often difficult to read, and eye-opening. Sebold is very honest about the rape and how it affected her. […]
Why is this shit still happening all these years later?
I’ve been meaning to read this book for forever, but finally I felt like I was in a good enough place that I had the mental bandwidth. In reality, I probably shouldn’t have waited so long. It wasn’t an easy read obviously, it’s just that Cullen is such a good writer that the book was surprisingly readable. It feels a bit gross to say that a book about such a terrible tragedy was a page turner and yet… it really was. I think most people […]
For my first read of 2019, I decide to learn EVERYTHING
Although probably best known for travel writing, Bill Bryson has written a number of science-based nonfiction books, and in 2003 he published a book that pondered the scientific questions and attempted to answer, well, nearly everything. The jump from travel writing to his Short History of Nearly Everything is not such a tremendous leap, however, if you think about it like a travelogue, starting with the beginning of the solar system and ending with life as we know it. In the introduction, Bryson describes how […]
Coffee Reading Lite
As my CBR handle suggests, I like coffee shops, both for the lattes and the atmosphere. So when I was in Chicago recently, I wanted to try out one of the trendy places as my touristy thing. At Intelligentsia Coffee, I saw this book for sale. I didn’t buy it then. I saw the same book a few days later, this time in paperback, for sale at a publisher exhibit. I didn’t buy it then. I did however, upon my return home, acquire said book […]